A Tale of Two Articles

In The New York Times, there is a new glowing profile of Antifa in the style section called “What to Wear to Smash the State”:

“In late August, a crowd of thousands — primarily leftists and liberals — cascaded down Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, Calif. They were marching on a spattering of right-wingers, Trump supporters and Nazis who were gathering under the mission to say “no to Marxism in America.” At the front of the march were about 100 people dressed in head-to-toe black.

According to many people present, this was the largest so-called black bloc they’d seen. This medley of black-clad anarchists, anti-fascists (known as “antifa” activists) and their fellow travelers was a response to the previous week’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. There, protests ended with 19 injured and 32-year-old Heather Heyer killed when James Fields, an admirer of Hitler who demonstrated with white supremacists, drove his car into a crowd.

This mass of solid black descending upon the park in Berkeley, hunting for fascists, was an intimidating aesthetic. That’s by design. …”

The subtitle of the article is “anti-fascist activists believe in dressing for the job they want. Right now, many think, that job is punching Nazis.” No moral ambiguity there even though the article is about how the Black Bloc is an Antifa tactic used to preserve anonymity while engaging in violence.

Contrast the reaction to the Antifa article to the come part that happened over the weekend when The New York Times profiled Tony Hovater of the Traditionalist Worker Party:

“HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio — Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.” …”

The title of the article was “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland.” At various points, Tony Hovater is called a rightwing extremist, a bigot and the polite and low key Nazi sympathizer next door. It led to an explosive reaction from the blue checks on Twitter who accused The New York Times of “normalizing Nazis” and sparked a furious debate in the mainstream media about how Nazis should be covered in New York Magazine, The Nation, Slate and other leftwing outlets.

It provoked some soul searching from the reporter who wrote the article:

“There is a hole at the heart of my story about Tony Hovater, the white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer.

Why did this man — intelligent, socially adroit and raised middle class amid the relatively well-integrated environments of United States military bases — gravitate toward the furthest extremes of American political discourse? …

Sometimes a soul, and its shape, remain obscure to both writer and reader.

I beat myself up about all of this for a while, until I decided that the unfilled hole would have to serve as both feature and defect. What I had were quotidian details, though to be honest, I’m not even sure what these add up to. Like other committed extremists I have known, Mr. Hovater had little time for a life beyond his full-time job and his line of activism. When he is not doing those things, he likes to be at home with his girlfriend (now his wife) and their cats.”

The New York Times national editor weighed in on the furor:

“Our reporter and his editors agonized over the tone and content of the article. The point of the story was not to normalize anything but to describe the degree to which hate and extremism have become far more normal in American life than many of us want to think.

We described Mr. Hovater as a bigot, a Nazi sympathizer who posted images on Facebook of a Nazi-like America full of happy white people and swastikas everywhere.

We understand that some readers wanted more pushback, and we hear that loud and clear.

Some readers also criticized the article for including a link to a webpage that sells swastika armbands. This was intended to show the darker reality beyond the anodyne language of the website. But we saw the criticism, agreed and removed the link. …”

Tony Hovater and his wife ended up losing their jobs and home over the article:

“A Nazi sympathizer who was profiled recently in The New York Times and his wife and brother-in-law have lost their jobs, after the article prompted an outpouring of hostility to the restaurant that employed them, both he and the restaurant said.

The Times article depicted Tony Hovater, 29, as an otherwise unremarkable person who voices “casually approving remarks about Hitler, disdain for democracy and belief that the races are better off separate.” He is active in a group called the Traditionalist Workers Party; organizations that track extremist groups have called it a hate group, allied with neo-Nazis, and call its views white supremacist, a label it rejects. …”

If you haven’t donated to the Hovater Family Support Fund, please consider doing so. The response from our community has been incredible. We have a young family that is going to be thrown out of its house on Christmas because of an article written by the mainstream media.

The contrast between the two articles really sums up where we are at in this country under the Trump presidency: in one case, it shows how “journalists” have become nothing more than political activists and inquisitors who use their positions of power and influence to demonize and harass their political opponents. In the other case, the mainstream media is celebrating Antifa and telling them what to wear when they go out to engage in violence, destroy property and incite riots.

This is why I am careful to draw distinctions between the vanguard Left, mainstream Left, mainstream Right and the vanguard Right. There is no equivalence between the Right and Left. The mainstream Left supports the vanguard Left and demands that the mainstream Right condemn the vanguard Right. The mainstream Right are cucks who condemn and disavow the vanguard Right. Neither the mainstream Right or mainstream Left condemn and marginalize the vanguard Left.

While someone like Tony Hovater will lose his job and home for being “the Nazi sympathizer next door,” the same isn’t true of the Antifa sympathizer next door. The Charlottesville resolution, which was passed unanimously by the House and Senate and which was signed by Trump, is an example of the mainstream Right and mainstream Left teaming up to condemn the vanguard Right exclusively for the violence in Charlottesville. The vanguard Left doesn’t have agonizing debates about “optics” because it can bring as many communist flags as it wants to Antifa events without any problem.

This is how we have gotten to the point where a Midwestern line cook who like cats and science fiction is a terrible, evil person, but the masked anarchist beating people up at Berkeley is a hero.

Note: Tony Hovater recently appeared on The Daily Shoah.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

12 Comments

  1. the media is the institution that is using its power of the bully pulpit to force businesses & other entities to punish white populist dissident like Tony…businesses are forced by the media to fire alt-righters…either fire the alt-righter or be demonized in the media…if you fire them, the media will give you positive attention…the carrot or the stick…

    if the media chose to do so, it could also demonize antifa and businesses that employ antifa…but the media chooses not to do that…

    understanding why things happen is important…

    the media is the hammer of the establishment…the media is funded by advertising buys from global corporations…that ad revenue is their rice bowl…so the media speaks for the global corporations…they are in chattel to these corporations…

    why do these global corporations, acting through the media, want to punish alt-righters?

    Altruism? Are the CEOs and plutocrat shareholders dedicated communists?

    No, I think that perhaps these driven, greedy, money-obsessed CEOs and plutocrats are primarily motivated by money…Imagine that!

    How does the alt-right threaten the wealth of these rich people that control the media via advertising purchases?

    Well, these big corporations that advertise in the media primarily sell goods and services to consumers…that is why they advertise in the media…they sell things to people who consumer products and also view/read tv and news…

    so, more consumers means more revenue & profits for these corporations…they want more consumers and consumption in america …

    The alt-right political movement, white populism, in general, threatens the growth in consumers and in consumer demand….consumer demand is 80% or so of the american economy….these big corporations know that…and white populism threatens immigration, and immigration is how these big corporations prop up the ponzi economy via mass immigration….

    immigration increases the number of consumers and consumer demand.

    this is why the media is so obsessed with punishing the alt-right…because the alt-right threatens their consumer-based rice bowl…

        • *Sigh*. It’s so disheartening to see fellow Catholics who refuse to align their thinking with reality. The Jews destroy Christendom, attempt to destroy the Church, subvert the moral order and some Catholics still think they are somehow our friends. Saint Paul said they don’t please God and are contrary to all men. The Popes segregated them from Christians. Saint John Chrysostom talked of their perfidy and still you deny reality. We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

  2. Simple … the country’s already divided. Just make it geographic. 2 smaller parts for (((them))) and a very enlarged Confederate States for us white Christians ( only. ) Form :

    THE CONFEDERATE PARTY so people have something concrete to follow and donate to, because they believe in your “Mission Statement / Contract With America.”

    TO “UNITE” AMERICA IN TO 3 REPUBLICS … ONE FOR EACH “GROUP” SO EVERYONE CAN BE HAPPY AND WE CAN MOVE FORWARD FINANCIALLY AND SOCIALLY !!!

    Your “marches and protests” act as an effective arm of THE CONFEDERATE PARTY

    Your enemies are more and more well funded and organized. The ONLY thing in your favor is that they’re violating The Rico Act and will eventually go down. THE CONFEDERATE PARTY is your “force multiplier.” Use it and win … or don’t, and just keep “whistling Dixie.”

  3. The mainstream ‘right’ are really just leftist lites who’ve abandoned their belief system. Its a heavily watered down version of the true right to gain public acceptance, which may sound like a wise strategy at the beginning, but means our true goals will never be defended, or argued for- and achieved. Total sellouts.
    How many on the…ahem….’right’ support diversity, gay marriage, mass immigration and
    job offshoring? Pretty much all of them. What the HELL do they ever try to conserve?
    The true right will not yield to current trends, fads or beliefs. Concern for your race, culture and future should NEVER become outdated.
    I’m sure the left and mainstream right sip lattes and champagne together away from the cameras. These parasites are one and the same.

  4. It’s a given the right faces unfair hostile terrain.

    TWP and LOS are fundamentally post-USA organisations – they want to exit the kwa. It’s tricky for the mainstream right to relate to something so radical.

  5. I think it’s important that we learn who the landlord responsible for this is. Sure would be terrible if something happened to them.

  6. When will one of the these “Nazi-sympathizers” inform his inquisitor that he is also a “national socialist” simply devoid of any racial or ethnic loyalty?

  7. Good piece. Very sorry that Hovater lost his means of financial support. The Left media has incredible bias against us on the far right, and that is becoming more obvious to the normies every day. You know, your and my normie friends who don’t like Negro crime and illegal immigrants, but will not publicly speak out on race issues. Some of them are starting to wake up a bit.
    On another note, I hear some Southern activists pronounce antifa as “anti-fah”, while Fox News in NYC pronounce it “an -tee-fuh”. Is there no settled pronunciation, or is that a Yankee versus South thing? I say anti-fah.

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